How Department of Lands and Surveys property statistics work

What the Department publishes each month#

The Department of Lands and Surveys (DLS, Τμήμα Κτηματολογίου και Χωρομετρίας) runs the Land Registry, so every contract of sale that is deposited and every transfer of title that is registered passes through its District Lands Offices. It turns those records into three sets of statistics, each published as a PDF on its portal:

• Contracts of sale: the number of contracts of sale deposited at each District Lands Office (Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos, Famagusta) and the Pancyprian total, month by month, set against the same months of the previous year.
• Sales and transfers: for each District Lands Office, the number of transfers of sale registered, the number of properties they covered, the total declared amount and the total accepted amount.
• Foreign buyers: buyers from other EU member states (excluding Cypriots) and buyers from outside the EU, by district, counted both as properties and as persons, for contracts of sale and for transfers.

Each file is a table per district office plus a Pancyprian page. The September 2026 contracts-of-sale file, for example, gives a Pancyprian total of 1,681 contracts for that month.¹ The Department publishes counts and amounts; it does not publish prices of individual properties, price per m², or any index of price levels.

Contracts of sale and transfers are different events#

A contract of sale is the signed agreement between buyer and seller. Depositing it at the District Lands Office records the buyer's interest against the property before the title changes hands; why that matters to a buyer is explained in Cyprus title deeds explained. The contracts series counts those deposits, which makes it the nearest thing to a monthly count of agreed sales.

A transfer of sale is the registration of the change of ownership itself, when the title moves into the buyer's name. For a resale with a title deed this can follow the contract quickly. For a new building whose separate title deeds have not yet been issued, the transfer can come much later, because there is nothing to transfer until the deeds exist.

The two series therefore measure different moments, and a month's transfers are not the same sales as that month's contracts. In September 2026 the Department recorded 1,681 contracts of sale deposited and 1,879 transfers of sale registered.¹² Neither number is "the" sales figure: the contracts series is closer to current demand, and the transfers series is the record of completed changes of ownership, with declared values attached.

The transfers file also counts properties as well as transfers: the 1,879 transfers registered in September 2026 covered 2,096 properties, because one transfer can include more than one property, such as a flat with a separate parking space or several plots.²

Buyer categories: EU and non-EU, with no Cypriot column#

The foreign-buyer file splits buyers into two published columns, "within EU (excluding Cypriots)" and "outside of EU". It has no column for Cypriot buyers, so the Department does not publish a domestic count.³

The same file uses two units. It counts properties with registered contracts of sale and, separately, buyers (persons) with registered contracts. In September 2026 it recorded 210 properties with contracts to EU buyers and 495 to non-EU buyers, and 235 EU buyers and 665 non-EU buyers as persons.³ The buyer count can be higher than the property count, for example when two people buy one property together.

The file also carries a note that changes to the way the term "alien" is coded in the DLS Land Information System altered how the statistics are presented, and the Department suggests avoiding comparisons between data from 2018 onwards and earlier years.³ The network's foreign-buyer figures therefore start after that change.

What the figures do not show#

• Prices. A count of contracts rises and falls with the number of deals, not with price levels. Price change is measured by indices built on valuation data, explained in how Cyprus house price indices work.
• Property type. The monthly contracts and transfers files are not split into flats, houses, land or commercial units, so a total mixes all of them.
• Average prices. The transfers file publishes a declared amount and an accepted amount (the value the Department accepts for calculating transfer fees), but dividing the declared amount by the number of transfers gives an average across plots, shops, part shares and homes alike, not a typical home price.²
• Nationality beyond EU and non-EU. The published foreign-buyer file does not break buyers down by country.
• The occupied areas. Famagusta figures come from the District Lands Office of Famagusta and cover only the government-controlled part of the district.

Release timing and revisions#

The Department does not, as far as we have found, publish a release calendar for these files. The dates printed on the files give a guide: the contracts-of-sale file carrying September 2026 figures is dated 5 October 2026, and the 2025 transfers file carrying December 2025 figures is dated 2 January 2026.¹⁴

The current-year files are replaced at the same web address as each month is added, rather than issued as new documents. The contracts file for 2025 and 2026, for example, sits in an upload folder dated February 2026 but carries figures to September 2026.¹ Because the file is replaced, a figure for a recent month can change when the next version appears. Treat the latest month as provisional until the following month's file confirms it.

How this network reads and charts the data#

The network's data-ingest process downloads the Department's PDFs from its portal, keeps a dated copy of each file for audit, and reads the monthly cells into a database, one row per series, district, buyer type and month. A later download of the same file overwrites the earlier row, so a revision by the Department flows through to the pages and charts without a second, conflicting figure. Every monthly figure on the data pages is the published cell, unchanged; totals over several months are sums of the published monthly figures, and percentage changes are calculated as later period divided by earlier period minus one.

Source: Department of Lands and Surveys (6 releases). Retrieved 29 Oct 2026.

Latest official release: September 2026 · Next expected: November 2026

Chart by the Cyprus Property Network · CC BY 4.0 · CSV · JSON · Permalink

The monthly series are published on three pages: Cyprus contracts of sale, property transfers in Cyprus and foreign buyers of Cyprus property. Each carries a "How this is calculated" section for its own series and the date of the Department file it was read from.